Mary Shelley Challenges Society in Frankenstein Essay

Walter Scott, the author of “Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Review of Frankenstein, 1818,” has done wide-ranged research on Shelley’s lyrical sense and her analysis of humankind. But, she declares that the novel was printed not by Mary Shelley and not her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. Despite making some realistic facts, Scott’s plot summary, review, content and character analysis is not very critical of the bizarre excesses of the novel, but acknowledges that Shelley use natural surroundings, incarnate as feminine, as the primary vehicle to reformulate the masculine archetype of Idealization.

In Ellen Moers’ critical essay Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother (1974) on Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, she argues that Mary Shelley’s story is greatly influenced by her experience of motherhood. This essay uses the historical approach, biographical, and formalist approach at point. Moers references the cultural context of the novel, Mary Shelley’s experience as a woman and mother and how that influenced her writing, and focuses on the genre of the novel quite a bit.

One such aspect of Shelley’s life portrayed in the novel was the role of women in society. In general, the predominant contenders in literature in the Romantic era were men. Mary Shelley, who was tutored by her father, had to publish her novel anonymously because it would not have been accepted otherwise. In Romantic literature, women were depicted as passive with a sense for nature and intuition. This can be seen in Frankenstein during Victor’s description of Elizabeth Lavenza: “While I admired...pretension” (Volume I, Chapter I, p 39). This quote can be viewed as an oppression of women due to the patriarchal structure of the language, as well as an emphasis on the nature of women. Mary Shelley also criticizes this oppression, but does not criticize overtly. This may be due to the fact that Shelley read her mother’s works as a child, and was influenced by the pro-feminist ideals that her mother advocated for. In addition, Frankenstein, at its core, is an expression of Shelley’s political viewpoints. The years 1811 to 1817 were ones of severe deprivation and hardship for the new working class created by the Industrial

A predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that of child-rearing and/or parenting techniques.  Specifically, the novel presents a theory concerning the negative impact on children from the absence of nurturing and motherly love.  To demonstrate this theory, Shelly focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s experimenting with nature, which results in the life of his creature, or “child”.  Because Frankenstein is displeased with the appearance of his offspring, he abandons him and disclaims all of his “parental” responsibility.  Frankenstein’s poor “mothering” and abandonment of his “child” leads to the creation’s

Where would we be without our families? Our Families shape us into the men and women of the future. What determines our morals, desires, happiness, faith, and our all encompassing lives. Mary Shelley’s family helped shape her into the woman that she had become. Having come from a family of great accomplished writers, she herself, set out to be a great writer. In the novel Frankenstein, written by her, there are several similarities between the monster and Shelley herself, all the while revealing to the reader the need for a complete family by the addition or loss of several family members in several different families in the novel, from Victor Frankenstein’s own family, to the De Lacey family, and the several other families that had small

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein does not seem like a novel that empowers women. Based on the doormat-esque female characters and entitled male protagonist, one might easily assume that Frankenstein is a typical male-penned, patriarchy-saturated 19th century work. However, when examined with feminist ideals in mind, Shelley’s novel actually makes a progressive argument about the role of women. Though the female characters are certainly lacking in both number and substance, this absence hinders Victor and his goals and does not merely assert that women are useless. In addition, the role of maternity and maternal figures amplifies the meaning of Frankenstein; the creation and caring for of life manifests as an immensely important process with both benefits and consequences, not as merely “women’s work”. Through an analysis of the existing female characters and the lack thereof, as well as by understanding the maternal figures present and how they further the novel, one can see how Shelley’s Frankenstein reveals that feminine roles are necessary for a functional society.

Mary Shelley discusses the themes of birth and creation, appearance and the necessity of companionship, love and acceptance in her novel Frankenstein. The themes that are explored in Frankenstein are relevant to today’s modern world. Shelley challenges readers by endorsing and confronting attitudes and values in her text through the events, circumstances and outcomes that take place in the novel, thus causing the reader to reflect upon their own lives and in turn the society around them.

    The creature's ambiguous humanity has long puzzled readers of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In this essay I will focus on how Frankenstein can be used to explore two philosophical topics, social contract theory, and gender roles, in light of ideas from Shelley's two philosophical parents, William Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

During the time period in which Mary Shelley wrote her debut novel, women were considered by Paracelsus and many other religious people as “...the field and the garden mound in which the child is sown and planted, then growing up to be a man” (Paracelsus, 202). Though women were held in the high position as life givers, they were also given the more subtle job as the caretakers of the home and of the children. These same attributes can be seen in Victor Frankenstein’s home. His mother, Caroline, had a desire to be the “guardian angel to the afflicted” (Shelley, 42) and one can argue that this attitude that Victor observed as a child contributed to his desire to protect those closest to him after he creates the monster. Because the monster’s creation was his doing, he had deliberately afflicted his family with

The horror classic novel Frankenstein has gathered a great deal of critical and commercial attention since first being introduced in 1818, and naturally there has been many academics who have analyzed many of the novel’s biggest themes, symbols, and motifs. This also includes in analyzing the author herself, Mary Shelley. Marcia Aldrich, who has her Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington, is one of the academics to underline the role of being a female writer in the 19th century and what importance this plays on the novel Frankenstein. In her article, co-written by Richard Isomaki, “The Woman Writer as Frankenstein” analyzes the significance of Mary Shelley being the daughter of a writer and how this contributed to her writing Frankenstein, which they speculate as her, Mary Shelley, envisioning herself as the Monster. Aldrich and Isomaki’s “The Woman Writer as Frankenstein” makes valid and persuasive points, which effectively argues that the novel is semi-autobiographical in the sense that Mary Shelley pictured her as the Frankenstein Monster, for many of the concerns that the authors bring up in their article highlight the insecurities, doubts, and inexorable frustrations of a young woman writing in the 19th century.

Mary Shelley took it upon herself to demean, belittle, and objectify the female characters in her story. Through this, the audience can gain insight into Shelley’s life and the way she viewed herself and her role in society ("A Feminist Reading”). “Frankenstein” served as an outlet for Shelley to express her feelings and frustrations against the society she lived

The creation of Dr. Frankenstein is perhaps one of the most eminent monster figures, not only of Gothic horror literature, but also of media in all its forms. The monster made its first appearance in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus. General knowledge of the creature remains widespread, as the familiar monster appears in countless films, books, and other forms of popular media. Less common, however, is knowledge of the social commentary threaded throughout the novel in which this monster first appeared. Within the story, Shelley condemns the prominent post-Napoleonic era bigotries of sexism and racism.

As Moers asserts, Shelley’s text reflects the trauma of birth and death that occurred in her life (96). Additionally, Frankenstein creating a monstrous creation reflects “the anxieties of a woman who, as daughter, mistress, and mother, was a bearer of death” (98). As Frankenstein was written by a woman with an all male perspective, it could be debated that Shelley was against feminism as well as women creating life. Therefore, Shelley was ambivalent about motherhood, which explains why the text is seen by critics such as Ellen Moers as a “birth myth”. However, as a counterargument Shelley was a feminist because the text can be seen as a social commentary of the existing patriarchal world led by men.

Mary Shelley chose to write Frankenstein from the perspective of three narrators, which, not surprisingly, were all male. We are presented with the accounts of Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the Monster. The women that are portrayed in this novel are simply tools used by the author to further develop the importance of the male experience of the narrators. They are portrayed as beautiful, capable of self-sacrifice, delicate and nurturing to their men, yet at the same time they have very little influence over the actions of these men. In the few instances where Shelley gives women power, she quickly takes it away. Such as the phenomena of creating life that women have when they give birth, she gives

Born to Mary Wollstonecraft in August of 1797, Mary Shelley joined a lineage rich with feministic pursuits. Undoubtedly inspired by her mother’s famed Vindication on the Rights of Woman, Mary Shelley portrayed feminist ideals throughout her own literature. Her most acclaimed work, Frankenstein, emphasizes the patriarchy through its depiction of Victor Frankenstein’s nineteenth-century Genevan society. Both the overwhelming male dominance and lack of female presence exhibited throughout Frankenstein highlights the importance of females among society.